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Post by 1983parrothead on Oct 10, 2017 13:59:05 GMT -5
Most of us (especially retro gamers) prefer even the lowest quality chiptunes over even higher-quality chiptune.
MIDI is referring to Roland and Yamaha devices or soundfonts used in home computers between the late 80s and early 90s as well as others in much later PCs of today. Some Sharp X68000 games play internal and MIDI simultaneously like Phalanx and Cho-Jin for examples.
CD/DVD HQ is whatever is added to the discs. Even chiptunes and replicas to sound chips were added.
So which do you prefer? Mine depends, but usually Sharp X68000 and arcade music.
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Post by novicola on Oct 10, 2017 14:32:32 GMT -5
It's not really a preference on my part. I just feel that any instrument, digital or analogue, is a valid tool and it's the onus of the musician to play to its and their own strengths.
Moreover a composition can work for one system and not the other because it wasn't composed for it.
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Post by condroid on Oct 11, 2017 2:41:17 GMT -5
Most of us (especially retro gamers) prefer even the lowest quality chiptunes over even higher-quality chiptune. What exactly do you mean by 'low/high quality chiptunes"? Nostalgia aside, I don't really have a preference here either, in the end what really matters is the skill of the composer and the technology used is a secondary concern.
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Post by 1983parrothead on Oct 12, 2017 12:58:01 GMT -5
Of course composition is more important than what's used to play music.
When NES came out, it took most people back at their homes while it overshadowed the arcades. Consoles back then were lower quality, but better than without home gaming.
Most people don't realize arcade versions come first before home versions. And when gamers hear 80s and 90s arcades for their first time, they say "Sounds like Genesis."
For CD consoles, most gamers were against their soundtracks. Zero Wing and Hellfire are two examples. Most of Shotaro Sasaki's music scores like STG Strike Gunner and Dragon Unit/Castle of Dragon for Athena Corp. were hated in arcade form and preferred in console form as well.
I assume most gamers either want 8-bit NES, metallic 16-bit or real heavy metal.
In my opinion, I usually prefer what Japanese composers such as SuperSweep supporters compose the most.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 12, 2017 13:57:14 GMT -5
As a format, obviously CD/DVD is more flexible and highest quality, and you can get all of the earlier sounds on it.
For retro chiptunes, I tend to prefer mediocre to low quality sample-based and PSG music to FM synth music, but great FM synth music to great PSG music.
Preference for console over arcade is often a combination of nostalgia and bad FM sounding harsher than bad NES music.
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Post by jcrankin on Oct 13, 2017 5:21:04 GMT -5
I'll take tracker music over these, especially that rather unique Amiga style, though I'm still a huge fan of PC-based necros, Siren and MCA (or Andrew Sega, Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos)
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Post by novicola on Oct 13, 2017 15:43:37 GMT -5
As a format, obviously CD/DVD is more flexible and highest quality, and you can get all of the earlier sounds on it. For retro chiptunes, I tend to prefer mediocre to low quality sample-based and PSG music to FM synth music, but great FM synth music to great PSG music. Preference for console over arcade is often a combination of nostalgia and bad FM sounding harsher than bad NES music. Yeah, I can't think of a single GBA/DS track that I wouldn't rather listen an arranged CD version of. Manfred "Shin'en" Linzner made an impressive program to wring more channels out of the GBA so it sounds kinda like an Amiga, but it's still leaves a lot to be desired. I haven't played every game these systems have to offer, however, so I wouldn't want to declare definitively that they're some kinda awkward middle ground.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 13, 2017 15:58:16 GMT -5
Yeah that's a pretty good description of the GBA chip. Dunno about the DS though.
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Post by novicola on Oct 14, 2017 2:07:22 GMT -5
A lot of DS tracks kinda felt a bit compressed for the system, at least to recollection. N64 and SNES ports definitely sounded inferior, like Chrono Trigger for example. Moreover games actually made expressly for the DS sounded inferior to official albums/MP3s of the same music. It's exceedingly difficult finding gamerips to illustrate my point, though, but the fact the albums were so common and often free seems to enforce that the creators thought so too.
Here's a particularly memorable track running off actual hardware, though it's not pushing any technical limits (and is an outlier to the rest of its respective game):
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Chezni
Junior Member
Posts: 90
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Post by Chezni on Oct 15, 2017 12:23:48 GMT -5
IMO tracker-based music is the most flexible, even though it's rarely used as well as it could be. For example, it's very easy to implement loops, or to have certain channels muted based on gameplay events, which means with relative ease you could create evolving soundtracks that are closely-tied to gameplay with tracker-based music. On the PC the best format is probably .xm, followed closely by .it, but on consoles the PS1's SPU was probably the best chip for loading tracker-music. Manfred "Shin'en" Linzner made an impressive program to wring more channels out of the GBA so it sounds kinda like an Amiga, but it's still leaves a lot to be desired. I haven't played every game these systems have to offer, however, so I wouldn't want to declare definitively that they're some kinda awkward middle ground. The GBA's sound chip, like the N64's sound chip, isn't designed for a particular sound format or for specific features. Both the GBA and the N64 implemented programmable audio chips, so the quality and features of game soundtracks vary between developers, to some extent anyhow.
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Post by surnshurn on Oct 17, 2017 9:30:00 GMT -5
I prefer original formats, staying with the artists' original intent. Nostalgia-wise, my first experience was with NES/MSX and AdLib/Soundblaster hardware. The 8-bit era is really when games saw capacity for real musical development. I'm also a fan of the super early experimental rock stuff going back to the early 70's (Pink Floyd was pretty major. Lots of British stuff there that is very interesting to listen to, if a bit difficult to find.)
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